Skin and Skins

This morning there is a very bright, but waning, moon and clear skies and the sun is in its twilight rising. The forest is brilliantly bathed in a supernatural blue light and, though there is still a chill on the air, the earth is breathing its life to us and envigorating us. The smell and sounds of the waking forest are wonderful. My ecstatic little wife is dancing and prancing about camp behind the 1980 F250 which has become our refuge while we work and pay our remote land and home. She wears no shoes and nothing but her favorite tie-dye shirt if she can.

Her foot falls heavy one time. I hear the loud squishy crunch from inside the camper, but she has really felt it. She has her foot held down. I am thinking she has killed one of the giant millipedes that often begin to stir at this hour and is meaning to delay the miserable sight. They are our friends and helpers in the forest garden. They and the snails turn the lime to trees and lots of loamy soil. I stare at her foot as she cautiously lifts it and the lifeless body of a tiny copperhead. Her heel falling on his neck was a fateful meeting as is believed in her culture. She had been an inch from certain death. Just another part of our small life in the forest.

We are both products of our young life in warrior cultures from opposite ends of the Earth and short childhoods. She is skilled in the quick and painless end of the enemy. The feeling of her bare skin against that of another body as the life leaves it is an intrinsic part of her and her spiritual connection to her home on Earth and the life beyond. This is something she learned as her mother was taken from her and she was taken to another land. She takes to playing with the body like a house cat with a trophy. She is bringing it in and out of the truck and displaying it with pride until I tell her not to bring it in again and to "Throw it off where I can't smell it.", as the wise old mayor of our unicorporated community does.

We all Live and Learn. I have seen her throw the snake off, but she is fast and I can't watch all she does. She is also living now much of her lost childhood as she can when she feels safe and comfortable enough. She has much compassion for the scaly things and It is on the drive to the next valley over that I learn she has retrieved it. She is ashamed and imagines him still alive but sleeping or still from cold and is trying to warm him and wake him and keep him as pet. She is of the young mind now and lonesome thinking her only other friend has abandoned us. She is no stranger to death or abandonment, but at times these are enough to overwhelm us all. I breaks my heart to tell her, but she most definitely killed him and I am very glad she did, because he otherwise would have killed her.

There are much deadlier snakes in her homeland and she survived them. Of course she knows this already, but she is of the young mind now and needs an adult which I painfully become knowing she will do the same for me. She becomes very exicted and throwing him from window of truck shouts "Snake Will Kill Me?! Snake Is Not My Friend!" and is done with him.

Skin on skin contact aroused her compassion. She was taught from experience to fear, distrust, and dislike people. She is the Strongest and most courageous person I know Physically and Spiritually. She was a mask model. It is hard for me to imagine why anyone would ever pay her to cover or change the appearance of her wonderful face. She does not look like everyone else. She is dark and definitely not from here and she didn't have a choice. The beauty of life is in how we can variously appear, but all be the same unerneath it all. We are all Human and Animal. I am praying for the fashions of skin and skins to return, because her naked face is still the most beautiful thing I have ever seen, because the sight and feel of bare skin arouses compassion in all of us, and because there is nothing I want more than her to feel safe and at home in this life on Earth.

It is hard to trust what is hidden behind a mask and designer clothes or the false facade of a social media filter or any of the things we use to artificially enhance our looks. Skin is honest. It is our connection to the Earth and it readily returns to the Earth. When we wear the skins of animals we connect with those lives. We are taught not to fear death, but to embrace it as another part of life to be made the best of. When we bare our skin we are showing our pride in our shared roots and common ancestry to the ancient woodlands. I wish this to be accepted. We can dress and act and speak according to our customs, but underneath it all, we are one. We have many shapes and tones, and some of us are marked by acient tribal customs, but when we are connecting by touch to the Earth and it's creatures we are reminded of where we all come from, and reminded that a life lived in fear of it's unavoidable end is not worth living at all.